A Country With No Name: Living in Liminal Spaces

Living in liminal spaces, particularly as an Asian American, creates a peculiar kind of loneliness.

By Prasanta Verma

W

e were out on the softball field for recess. In the outfield, no one else could hear our conversation, well out of earshot from the teacher on duty. It was another typical hot, sunny, Southern day, and I could feel the red clay burning like hot coals beneath my feet. My classmate turned to me, hatred and bitterness seething in her eyes.

“Go back to Indiana, or wherever it is you came from!” she hissed.

Sound travels faster in humid air, stinging the ears more quickly than normal. I said nothing in response, but knew what she meant. Her use of the name of a state, Indiana, instead of the name of the country, India, made the meaning undeniably clear. My family was, as far as we were aware, the only Indian family within a 45-mile radius, and my classmate had never met (or presumably seen) anyone else before from the far-off land of “Indiana”.    

What did that even mean? I didn’t know. When had I, in my ten years of life at that point, ever thought of going back? Go back where? We had moved to Alabama from South Dakota, so that was the only place that made any logical sense in my mind to even possibly return to, but that had not occurred to me. Of course I had not thought of going back. After all, I did not make those decisions as a ten-year-old. Going back to India made no sense to me, either. My parents immigrated to the U.S. when I was only one-year-old, and America was the only home I knew.

Had I done or said something to make my classmate hate me? I couldn’t recall what might have preceded that comment, nor what precipitated that hatred. She didn’t like me, and there was no apparent reason. Except one. You can’t quite forget when someone tells you to go back to where you came from, to leave the place you are standing, as if you are not worthy to be standing there.

My classmate told me who I was not, which is to say, I was not like her. I looked at me, and saw “American.” She looked at me, and saw “foreigner,” “Indian,” or “Asian.” At that age, it was not as obvious to me that I should be any different from anyone else, because I thought and spoke like an American. I just didn’t look like one to her. I’d live with that tension for years, struggling to figure out where I belonged, seeking to define terms that explained my identity. What did it mean to be Indian? American? American Indian? Asian? Brown? Where did I fit in?

To make matters more confusing, I was always perplexed when filling out forms that asked for my race. I didn’t belong in any category on the list. The closest group that fit was “Asian/Pacific Islander,” and even that annoyed me, because as we all know, Asia is quite diverse, but the folks creating the forms either didn’t know or thought it mattered. If a person who didn’t know me simply looked at the “Asian/Pacific Islander” box checked on any form, they wouldn’t know if I was from Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, or Pakistan. Asians are all lumped into one category, one blob, with no distinction made for our unique identities. We don’t have a defined country on these forms; we are one mass tied together because of geography.

My sister and I were the only Indian students in our elementary school. Before school each morning, my mother divided my long hair into two sections, braiding my hair into two braids, weaving a red ribbon through the braids and then tying the braids into two loops, one on each side of my head, just as girls would do in India. The problem was that we weren’t in India. No one else wore their hair like mine in my southern school. When I was in the 6th grade, I wanted to wear my hair down, because I was too old for ribbons and braids, and I wanted to look like everyone else. My hair, however, was not straight like most other Indian girls — mine happened to be very curly and hence, very tangly. I didn’t know how to tame my naturally curly hair. I was called names, my hair was made fun of, and I was bullied by another girl in class. In that sense, I had the full American experience of all the dreaded nightmares associated with middle school.

I used to be angry at God for my curly hair, my skin color, and putting me in the middle of two cultures. If God wanted me to be Indian, why had my parents left India? If God wanted me to be American, why did I look Indian? Why had He made my life complicated in this way? Everyone had different expectations of me. Americans looked at my external appearance and expected me to be Indian, not knowing if I spoke English. Strangers stayed distant and distrustful because of my skin color, or because of my ethnic name. Indians expected me to be Indian, sometimes speaking to me in Hindi or some other language. I didn’t speak the language, only understanding a little bit of my parents’ mother tongue, Punjabi. Sometimes, I wanted to scream, “I’m American!” I went through phases when I rebelled against anything Indian, to the point I’d say, “I’m not Indian!”, and friends and family would look at me in surprise and amusement, because that’s not what my skin color conveyed to them. I often felt like I was living in a land of in-between, in a country with no name, a liminal space, the proverbial no-man’s land, not fitting in anywhere.

Growing up, I didn’t know anyone like myself, that is, of Indian descent but raised in the U.S. Even today, the Indians I know have grown up in India, coming to the U.S. for college or a job. I know people like me do exist, but I have not had the privilege of growing up close to others who were like me, because I’d grown up in a small southern town. I attended a local Christian college in Alabama, with maybe one other Indian student, and once again, that afforded no opportunities to meet anyone with a similar background as mine. Plus, most Indians are Hindus, which placed me further in that land of in-between as I had broken with my Hindu background and parents’ religion and began attending church. I was the first Indian Christian I had ever known.

I moved from Alabama to Milwaukee as a young adult, a city with the distinction of being called “the most segregated city in America.” People would ask me, “Wasn’t it racist in the south?” In fact, Milwaukee has a long history of racism. People I’ve spoken with are often shocked when I tell them of my experiences with racism in Milwaukee, and how it can be more racist than even where I grew up in the south. On several occasions, a few different people would then launch into an explanation of the hierarchical structures between Italian, Polish, German, and other European groups that existed in Milwaukee and how Italians were discriminated against. If Asians had a story to tell, why did my white friends feel compelled to explain how bad racism was for Europeans with each other in Milwaukee? I found this frustrating. I also found it damning; we as a society, as humans, will find ways to develop power structures in our communities that subjugate others. India has its own caste system and issues with colorism. Doesn’t this point to a pervasive illness that needs a cure? Racism is its own pandemic, an evil and sickness that exists all over this planet. We would not be shocked by stories of racism if we truly understood human nature and history—real history, not watered down, sugar-coated versions of the truth.

Living in this in-between place lends itself to a peculiar kind of loneliness. I feel the absence of not having a close friend who can commiserate with this part of my life. What if there had been a friend with a similar background like mine while growing up, and we could have shared our common experiences, puzzlements, and frustrations? What if I had such a friend now? It has taken me years to untangle and unpack internal dialogues and assimilation strategies I developed, and years of reckoning and soul-searching to reach a place of peace and rest regarding my identity. Living without friendship in my life has made me a loyal friend, and for those willing to befriend someone who doesn’t look like them, I have found true friendship. Some of my closest friends happen to have blond hair – and we happily accept each other as we are.

Photo by Chad Madden on Unsplash

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Prasanta Verma is a writer and poet. She was born under an Asian sun, raised in the Appalachian foothills, and is currently digging out of a snow pile in the upper Midwest. She holds an MBA and an MPH, and is a regular contributor to The Contemplative Writer and The Mudroom Blog. Her work has been published in Propel Sophia, (in)courage, The Perennial Gen, Red Tent Living, Christians for Social Action, Relief Journal, Barren Magazine, Tweetspeak Poetry, and more. You can connect with her on Twitter @VermaPrasanta, Instagram @prasanta_v_writer and her website prasantaverma.com.